Kirsten Gillibrand and the Whiplash of #MeToo

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Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, far left, walks with staff members to the Senate after President Trump disparaged her on Twitter, calling her a “lightweight” and a “total flunky” for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.CreditPete Marovich for The New York Times

A little more than a week ago, or what feels roughly like the time of the Ottoman Empire, given the rhythms of the current news cycle, Kirsten Gillibrand, the junior senator from New York, appeared to have made a grand self-annihilating, political miscalculation. On Dec. 6, three days after a fund-raiser held for her on the Upper West Side, she called for Al Franken’s resignation from the Senate in a long Facebook post. In it she distinguished the allegations of sexual impropriety against him — several women had come forth saying that Mr. Franken kissed or touched them without permission, often during the process of having their pictures taken with him — from the criminal accusations that have besieged Harvey Weinstein, Roy Moore and Donald Trump. But at the same time she argued that making these distinctions is pointless.

We owe it to our children to “offer clarity,’’ she wrote, to be spared “explaining the gradations between sexual assault, sexual harassment and unwelcome groping.” Mr. Franken, Ms. Gillibrand reasoned, would provide this clarity if he forfeited his right to an ethics investigation and stepped down, a gesture that would signal that “any kind of mistreatment of women in our society isn’t acceptable.”

Not everyone saw it this way — as an obvious means of restitution or purposeful messaging — that a Democratic senator who had served women well in public office, if not always in life, should vacate a seat in Congress, leaving it potentially vulnerable to Republican opposition. What if Minnesota’s former governor Tim Pawlenty, a Republican, won Mr. Franken’s seat in an election next year against some lesser-known opponent? What if the seat went to Gretchen Carlson, the former Fox News anchor especially primed for the current moment, given that her sexual harassment suit against the network brought down Roger Ailes? Rumors were already circulating about potential bids, and Minnesota is not reliably left-leaning — Hillary Clinton won the state last year by only two points. Both constituents of Ms. Gillibrand’s and supporters from around the country lashed out, calling her an opportunist, a bully, a simpleton, a betrayer, a big disappointment.

Her Facebook page filled with thousands of comments, many of them suggesting that those who had stood with her in the past couldn’t do it any longer. “So you want to sacrifice Al Franken to your altar of purity? I am thoroughly disgusted,” wrote one woman. “I was an adamant supporter of yours until today,” wrote a New Yorker, “but turned a corner and will vote for any Democrat who runs against you.”

Ms. Gillibrand had begun the year as a celebrated antagonist of the Trump agenda, early on delivering an impassioned speech at a rally in Lower Manhattan challenging the president’s executive order limiting immigration to the United States, and voting more consistently against his cabinet picks than most of her colleagues in the Senate. Although she entered the Senate as a centrist, she had been tacking increasingly to the left throughout her tenure, turning on the gun lobby most notably and serving as a co-sponsor of the Dream Act. Young women mobilized by Ms. Clinton’s candidacy started falling for Ms. Gillibrand, who already seemed to be running an entirely unofficial but potentially very successful campaign for the 2020 presidency.

Whatever setbacks that agenda might have received over Mr. Franken’s eventual resignation were quickly obscured this week when Ms. Gillibrand called for Congress to investigate the multiple allegations of sexual assault against the president. Taking the bait that was bound to resurrect her as a liberal hero, Mr. Trump defaulted to incendiary commentary on Twitter, calling Ms. Gillibrand a “lightweight” and a “flunky,’’ and saying that she would do anything for contributions. The sexist innuendo enraged editorial writers around the country, spurring USA Today to proclaim that “a president who would all but call Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand a whore is not fit to clean the toilets in the Barack Obama Presidential Library.” Ms. Gillibrand fought back on television, in interviews and on social media in the name of victims, in the name of women’s voices.

What she proved is the strength of her political instincts, and what she provided is a forecast of how she would fight in a race against the president. Had Roy Moore, with his own history, won the Alabama senate race this week, Ms. Gillibrand might have had a harder time climbing back so quickly, but as it stands a woman, Minnesota’s well-liked lieutenant governor, Tina Smith, was named to replace Mr. Franken until his seat comes up for re-election. Beyond that, younger women, who have a greater disposition toward zero-tolerance policies for sexual harassment and abuse, might consider the brigade she led against the senator a reason to get behind whatever presidential ambitions she might have.

How political leaders respond to accusations of sexual misconduct that come up around their colleagues in public life is bound to be a litmus test of their viability in the coming weeks and months. Ms. Gillibrand, despite the perception that she has exploited the issues of sexual harassment and abuse to her own advantage, has the moral authority to take on these subjects, given how much she has fought for the rights of assault victims in the military and on campuses. As she ascends, she might use that authority to push for due process, to ensure that those accused are not summarily expunged from civic life without proper review. Zero tolerance shouldn’t mean zero chance of a fair hearing or no possibility of redemption.